Introducing Rolling Downhill
A sociological perspective on economic mobility and the future of work
The prevailing image of economic mobility in the U.S. is one of climbing. Up the corporate hierarchy. Up the ladder. In my mind’s eye I see a free climber in on a barren rockface. No ropes and the impression of no support. The image of climbing works as an analogy for the dominant perspective on the drivers of upward mobility: skills, determination, and hard work. In sum, individual effort. There is room in the climbing analogy for the recognition that people gain skills through education, training, and experiences that prepare workers for the climb and people do not all take the same route up the mountain.
Rolling downhill offers a different anchoring image of economic mobility and people’s work lives: the ball rolling downhill. This image taps into a different set of colloquial language we to describe mobility: high flyers, stars, water walkers who ascend quickly within organizations and industries. Now flip the direction: instead of up, greatness is rolling downhill faster and making it further. Like a creative receiving their “break” and falling quickly into the spotlight or things “lining up”. People in these moments describe the exhilaration of being “found”.
Three Core Key Features
A ball rolling downhill works as an analogy for economic mobility and people’s work experiences across their lives. First, there is a built-in focus on variation in the rolling downhill image: workers are moving at different speeds, go different distances, and experience different levels of momentum. A mantra here at Rolling Downhill is that averages only take you so far. The story is in the variation.
Second, the core the rolling downhill image puts the environment into focus: some people start on a steeper downhill, some people follow the ruts of education, training, social networks, and job ladders that channel workers to jobs. Some workers experience the career break (free fallin’, yes I’m free fallin’), while others hit the obstacles, change tracks, or find themselves stalled at the end of the runway. The focus of the rolling downhill perspective is on these ruts and obstacles in the environment – institutions we call them in sociology. Think patterns. People have been here before and paved the way.
Third, a key feature of the rolling downhill perspective is the attention paid to transitions: from school-to-work, across jobs, spells of unemployment, as well as the transitions happening in other parts of workers’ lives, from their families, neighbors, and community. Even if two people have the same work history and experiences, all else may not be equal in other parts of their lives that affect their careers. Transitions are when the role of institutions are most clearly seen and they are key junctures that set workers on different paths.
The Research Agenda
The goal of Rolling Downhill is to provide a research agenda for how to use these data to study workers’ careers, economic mobility, and the future of work.
The rolling downhill perspective is a sociological perspective. I have highlighted three core features of the approach here, but over the course of the blog I will introduce additional concepts. This perspective is broad enough to encompass the climbing and skills-focused analogy of mobility from economics. The two perspective are complementary. The skills-focused approach has spilled lots of ink, yet there remains the fundamental difficulty of measuring workers’ skills and the skill requirements of jobs. In future posts, I will describe how a sociological approach contextualizes and incorporates a skills-based approach.
At Rolling Downhill, our argument is that we want to understand how economic mobility is occurring, we need greater detail and better approaches to understanding the pathways or ruts that facilitate mobility. National trends in education and labor market characteristics using cross-sectional data don’t cut it. The U.S. is not one labor market, but many geographically-defined markets that are further segmented within and across firms, industries, and occupations. We need to contextualize mobility within the context of people’s work lives and study key transitions like the transition from school-to-work and across job changes. If want to understand how work is changing, we need a strong grasp on the mechanisms of mobility and careers to pinpoint changes in institutions and markets over time.
This is a high bar. There is a requirement longitudinal data. The shift to longitudinal data is essential for understanding how past work experiences and obstacles shape future opportunities. If we fail to take the long view on workers’ mobility, we may miss the key explanations we are looking for.
The good news is there has been significant progress made in creating state longitudinal data systems that link education and workforce administrative data. New data sources collected from resumes and websites also provide an opportunity to create longitudinal datasets.
Background
The key source for Rolling Downhill will be my own research. In addition, I will highlight key studies and concepts from sociology and economics. At UNC-Chapel Hill, I developed and taught courses on Labor Markets, Organizations, and Social Stratification and the material from the courses will regularly show up here (if I have any former students out there, please say hello!). Read more about my ongoing research at www.michael-a-schultz.com.